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Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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From the day a child is born, they are considered a clean slate where their innocence is valued about all. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the child narrator, Scout Finch, is used to describe the innocence of not knowing the harms of the world. Childhood innocence doesn’t last forever and is only truly valued when it is gone. Scout lives in an old neighborhood filled with grown people. The only other children are Jem Finch, her brother, and Charles Baker Harris who goes by Dill. The small town of Maycomb, Alabama is known to be tired and old. There is little to none excitement and the town is known to be safe. This has a huge impact Scout which causes her to be naïve and innocent. The town consisting of old people causes the ones around …show more content…

No one knows who they are going to marry when they grow up as a child. Scout seems quite convinced she will marry Dill when she says, “…we’re going to get married as soon as we are big enough. He asked me last summer” (Lee 68). Many children don’t understand that relationships don’t last forever. The concept of forever is such an innocent idea that only children tend to believe it. They haven’t faced the hardships that will lead them to know just how long forever really is. This use of pathos makes the reader envy Scout’s innocence. As you grow older and start to realize not everyone is going to stay in your life forever, your perception of the world changes. Harper Lee has an interesting way of making you feel warm and fuzzy inside thinking of your childhood innocence. She also achieves this effect through the use of …show more content…

Harper Lee shows slight signs of the loss of innocence as she gets older and tries to understand things. As Scout loses this innocence, she won’t get it back. An example of her loss would be when she thinks to herself, “As Atticus once advised me to do, I tried to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it…” (Lee 48). This metaphor showed the reader her slight maturing as she starts to understand how others feel. When you are a child you care about others, but you never try to step into their shoes and see how they feel. Your concerns generally revolve around yourself. As she is maturing, she won’t be able to go back and have the innocence of not knowing how others feel. The thing about innocence is that you don’t realize the loss until it’s too late and you’ll never be able to get it

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“There is no courage but in innocence; no constancy but in an honest cause” (Thomas Southerne). Scout’s innocence, The Radley family, and Tom Robinson’s trial all convey the theme that innocence leads to courage. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee portrays the ways in which innocence leads to courage. Harper Lee illuminates the fact that Scout’s innocence leads to her courage within her community. “‘That’s okay, ma’am, you’ll get to know all the county folks after a while.’

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TIME FLIES Do you remember a time where you could run around and play? A time at your house where you had no worries. In the story To Kill A Mockingbird the silent process of aging takes many of the children’s childhoods. The book tells of racial diversity and the effects of it on a man and his family.

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(Need a hook). The author uses of view of a child, Scout Finch, along with two other children, Jem Finch and Dill, to show the innocence of children is taken away from the coming of age. She uses a trial against a black man raping a white girl to show how children are innocent. Harper Lee uses life lessons to show that Scouts coming of age. Scout says, “Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in” (Lee 129).

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Scout then began to realize that the town of Maycomb isn’t what she had it out to be. Evil things happen, moreover, people have numerous sides to themselves. Ultimately, Scout becomes a mature, young adult with

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In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Scout matures throughout the book as she matures her innocent nature is gradually lost and she realizes how senseless and brutal people can be. In the beginning she has still not seen any of the bad things people do in the world. Her innocence at is first shown when Dill asks Scout to marry him because they don’t now what marriage really is they both go along with it and say that they are married from then on. Another example of Scout’s innocence is when after she goes to school and gets in trouble she comes home and tells Atticus that she does not want to go to school anymore. She says that Burris Ewell only comes one day then goes home lie it would be a good thing to be a Ewell because you would not

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Scout admits she feels fine and Atticus asks her what is wrong. She tells him that her teacher, Miss Caroline, says that they cannot read together anymore because she is too advanced for her age. Atticus responds with, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,”(Lee 39). Though Scout does not fully understand the concept of this lesson, it slowly comes to her as the book advances. She is able to make many connections using what Atticus taught her, and she truly understands the meaning of standing in another person’s shoes.

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When one grows up, it is inevitable they will lose their innocence. Seeing the world through rose colored glasses can only take one so far, and eventually they will have to open their eyes to real issues in their lives. While this happens at different ages for everyone, Atticus in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee believes that his kids should not be sheltered from the real world. As Scout and Jem, Atticus’ children, grow up, especially in a time where Maycomb is so segregated, Atticus teaches his kids real life lessons and to not become like the rest of their town; racist and judgemental. This comes with a cost, however, as the kids “grow up” at an expedited rate.

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Innocence is a time in one’s life of carefreeness and peace. In youth, children have yet to experience the harsh realities of life, and when they do, it is often hard to cope with. In her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee portrays Maycomb’s prejudiced ways through an unfair trial of an innocent man, and through the treatment of certain members of the community. The young narrator, Scout, and her older brother, Jem, experience growth and learn compassion when the trial exacerbates Maycomb’s intense intolerance. In this novel, Lee uses the characterization of the Finch children to demonstrate that innocent children who have been exposed to their community’s prejudice, often have trouble adjusting, but need a mentor figure to help them mature.

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Many people forget the simplistic and common values that their child selves once held; values such as innocence and bliss, which children have always had since humans have walked the Earth. Their inability to see the harsher side of life has inspired many tales and exciting adventures from their point of view, which always adds an interesting way of thinking about the world. People so often lose this innocence that they fail to see and admire some of the things only kids can see. This much and more is most certainly true of Jean Louise Finch, the narrator and main character of Harper Lee’s famous book, To Kill a Mockingbird. Jean Louise, also known as Scout in the story, has many admirable qualities as a kid because she has the ability to think beyond herself and shows courage to the people around her.

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And eventually, after Boo saves Jem and Scout from Bob Ewell, and she takes him home, Scout realizes that “... Just standing on the Radley front porch was enough (Lee 374),” for her to see through Boo’s eyes. She finally begins to understand Boo and why he acts the way that he does. Ultimately, teaching her that she shouldn’t listen to rumors or judge someone simply because they are different. The town of Maycomb is a perfect setting for To Kill a Mockingbird.

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Dhyanee Bhatt 9A          Scout’s Development for Narration All of us grow, develop, and adapt to our surroundings according to what we see and learn. However, we don’t always only the just induce the positive values, but also adapt to the disadvantageous values, as well. To Kill a Mockingbird is a unique novel written by Harper Lee, which tells about a sophisticated family living in a small town. The focus of the book is Scout, the main character and an innocent child, and the story is presented from her perspective.

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Essay 1 Date Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird “To kill a Mockingbird” is a novel in which Harper Lee, the author, presents forth various themes among them the unheard theme of social molarity. Harper dramatically uses a distinctive language through Scout, who is the narrator of the story to bring out the difficulties faced by children living in the southern Alabama town of Maycomb. Harper has dramatically displayed use of bildungsroman throughout the story; this helped to give the story a unique touch of a child’s view to bring out a different type of humor and wit. It has also used to develop and thrive the theme of morality in the society.

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Dill’s character brings out the playful innocence by his exaggerations and stories. “Dill recited this narrative” (Lee 186) about him being “bound in chains and left to die” (Lee 186) by his hateful stepfather. Because of this, he ran away to Maycomb and hid under Scout’s bed before being discovered. In actuality, he believed that his parents neglected him and he was upset. Being at the age of about seven, Dill had to have got on a train and walked many miles to reach his destination.

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702 Words | 3 Pages

In this period of time Maycomb suffered through the ‘’Great Depression’’ (Economically in difficult), but Scout & Jem’s dad Atticus, was a prominent lawyer who had a solid reasonable salary to hold his family economically. The novel’s storyline follows the significant incidents that occurred to Jem’s & Scout’s childhood. Scout’s voice is the narrator of the book, and the expressions used to describe numerous situations in the book may have been interpreted in Scout’s perspective. In this novel, Jem starts his age of nine in the beginning of the story as a young boy and his sister Scout starts five turning six.

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“Mom?” I called out as soon as I woke up, sitting up. 1 “I'm right here. What do you need Mandy?” She replied peering over at me from the top of her magazine.

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